It was only now on this visit to Bald Hills that Pierre felt the full value and charm of his close friendship with Prince Andrey. The charm went beyond his relations with Andrey himself to embrace all the family and all the staff. Despite hardly knowing them, Pierre felt immediately like an old friend when he was in the company of the harsh old prince and the gentle, diffident Princess Marya. Everybody liked him. It was not only Princess Marya, who had been won over by his gentle attitude to the pilgrims and now treated him to her most radiant gaze – even the tiny one-year-old Prince Nikolay, as the old prince called him, beamed at Pierre and came over to him to be picked up. And Mikhail Ivanych and Mademoiselle Bourienne looked on with smiling faces when he talked to the old prince.
When the old prince did emerge for supper that evening, it was obviously a gesture to Pierre. Throughout his two-day stay at Bald Hills he was extremely friendly towards him, and asked him to come and stay again.
When Pierre had left and all the family came together to talk about him, as people always do when a new guest has gone, everyone spoke well of him, and that is something people rarely do.
CHAPTER 15
It was on his return from leave on this occasion that Nikolay Rostov realized for the first time, and fully appreciated, the strong ties that bound him to Denisov and the regiment in general.
When Rostov was getting close to the regiment he began to experience the same kind of feeling that had come over him as he had approached his home in Moscow. When he saw his first hussar in his unbuttoned regimental uniform, when he recognized red-haired Dementyev and saw the tethered chestnut horses, when Lavrushka shouted gleefully to his master, ‘The count’s here!’ and Denisov, who had been asleep on his bed, ran all dishevelled out of the mud-hut to embrace him, and the officers gathered round to welcome him, Rostov felt just as he had done when his mother had embraced him, and his father and his sisters, and the tears of joy welling up in his throat prevented him from speaking. The regiment was home too, a home as dependable, loving and precious as his parents’ home.
After reporting to his colonel for reassignment to his squadron, doing a spell as orderly officer and going out on a foraging expedition, after resuming all the little regimental occupations and getting used to being deprived of liberty and pinned down within one narrow, set framework, Rostov had the same feeling of peace and moral support, the same sense of being at home, in the right place, that he had felt under his father’s roof. There was none of the confusion of the outside world, where he could never find the right place to be and he kept getting things wrong. There was no Sonya to have things out with (or not, as the case may be). There was no possibility of deciding whether or not to go somewhere. There were no longer twenty-four hours in every day to be used up in so many different ways. There were no vast masses of people of medium significance, neither close nor remote. There were none of those obscure and uncertain money dealings with his father, and no reminders of that ghastly occasion when he had lost money to Dolokhov! Here in the regiment everything was straightforward and simple. The whole world could be divided into two unequal halves: our Pavlograd regiment and everything else. And everything else was no longer any concern of his. Here in the regiment everything was settled: you knew this man was a lieutenant and that one a captain, this man was a good fellow and that one was not, but, most importantly, everyone was your comrade. The manager of the field-canteen didn’t mind giving credit, and your pay came through every four months. There was no need to think or choose for yourself; you just had to avoid doing anything that was wrong by Pavlograd standards, and when you were sent on any assignment, as long as you did what was clear and distinct, what you were told, all would be well.
Rostov was pleased and relieved to submit once again to the clear-cut conditions of regimental life; he felt like a weary man lying down to rest. During this campaign life in the regiment was all the more comforting to Rostov, because after his loss to Dolokhov (something for which he could never forgive himself despite his family’s efforts to console him), he was determined to be a different soldier and to make amends by behaving well and by being a thoroughly good comrade, a good officer, in fact a good man – a hard task
Since his gambling loss Rostov had given himself five years to repay the debt to his parents. He was getting ten thousand a year from them, and he had made up his mind to spend no more than two thousand, putting the rest towards repayment.
